Multi-layered, smart entertainment as much about our human flaws as about South Korean chaos.
Train to Busan
Grade: A-
Director: Sang-ho Yeon
Screenplay: Sang-ho Yeon
Cast: Yoo Gong, Soo-an Kim
Rating: NR
Runtime: 1 hr 58 min
by John DeSando
“I'll take you to mom no matter what.” Seok Woo (Yoo Gong)
This workaholic father, Seok Woo, doesn’t realize the ramifications of “no matter what.” South Korean zombie thriller and box-office phenomenon Train to Busan speeds him and daughter, Soo-an (Soo-an Kim), from Seoul like the titular conveyance through cars and society in a way reminiscent of Snowpiercer. The conceit works well because it can give ample thrills and jump scares while taking a figurative run through society from one car to another.
Train to Busan is much more than the sum of the frenetic zombie hordes that terrorize the train in scarily multiplying numbers. It is also about the community joining forces to combat crime, workers facing down management, commoners disdaining government in general, and distracted parents. Director/writer Sang-ho Yeon navigates between the terror and the commentary with effective timing, never letting the flaming story erase the sociological implications, which sometimes are heavy handed.
While cinematographer Lee Hyung-deok does first-rate work on the mise en scene (from macro shots of the train and stampeding zombies to action in narrow on-board bathrooms), and editor Yang Jin-mo keeps the story moving and understandable, Train is also about relationships.
Although several of the good characters do not make it to the station, those who do are representative of the hope humanity must have in its darkest times. Along the way we do have to experience the silly, cartoonish characterization of the cowardly bus-company executive Yong-Suk (Kim Eui-sung). He could have been a zombie.
I can’t be sure how much of the South Korean audience embraced the implications of capitalism lying underneath the speeding-train motif. What I know is that for a critic who usually avoids zombie films unless they are humorous satires, I enjoyed Train to Busan as a multi-layered entertainment to appeal to just about anyone who likes to be thrilled by first-rate cinematography, a wild-ass story, and some heady thoughts along the way.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
